


Attachment

by ultharkitty



Series: Attachment [1]
Category: Transformers Generation One
Genre: M/M, Other, Plug and Play Sexual Interfacing, Sticky Sexual Interfacing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-10
Updated: 2012-04-10
Packaged: 2017-11-03 09:34:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/379947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultharkitty/pseuds/ultharkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Autobots have lost; a Decepticon-Quintesson alliance has taken Cybertron and Earth. Separated from his allies, injured and alone, First Aid is given the chance to survive.</p><div class="center"></div><div class="center">
  <p>* * *</p>
</div>Written for Dark Fest, to the prompt: <i>Any fandom, any characters, after the apocalypse.</i><p>Sticky and non-sticky, dark and bleak, mix of first and third person POV. </p><p>I've elected not to give more specific warnings, but if you'd like a full list of the content advice, PM me. </p><p>Many thanks to naboru for betaing this little monster, and for helping me to find a summary and title <3</p><div class="center">
  <p>* * *</p>
</div>
            </blockquote>





	Attachment

_Autobot Chief Medical Officer, First Aid  
Journal recording 001_

"Do you want to live?"

It was the first thing he ever said to me. Three months ago; ten days after the tide of war turned. 

I remember thinking it was a trick, that he'd tilt his head and laugh and there'd be a blade in his hand. I thought he wanted to kill me. 

No, that's wrong. I thought he wanted to do worse. He was the enemy; Decepticon, evil, treacherous. I'd read the files on him, the theories about his mental state. So many diagnoses by different psychiatrists who'd talked to him on his many brief stays in Autobot prisons. 

"Well?" he'd said, and he'd flicked his rotors in that way heliformers do to signify impatience. "You stay here, they'll catch you."

 _They_ were the Sharkticons. Quintesson slaves hunting Autobot stragglers in the ruins of Cybertron's great cities. Galvatron's allies.

They were meant to be Vortex's allies too. 

Going with him was a risk. But I could hear footsteps in the distance, the guttural snarl of the drones. I was shivering, exhausted. I think I was leaking, a seep of energon from a conduit in my knee. I'd never have been able to outrun him. Or the Sharkticons. But to trust to his good intentions? That was hardly sane. 

I remember thinking of my team, of the pain of severance as Defensor fragmented for the final time. I thought of Hot Spot turning grey as he fell. His transformation had continued, enough power in his cells to complete that one action even though his laser core was empty, his cybernetic brain a molten mess seeping from his helm. I thought of Groove and Streetwise and Blades, how well they'd fought, how brave they'd been. How swiftly they'd died. 

I remember leaning against the bulkhead with Vortex so close, and I did nothing to stop him getting closer. I expected the knife; I knew I didn't want it, but I remember thinking that I could just give up. I could let him do his worst, and it wouldn't matter what that was, because it would see me through to the Matrix, and my team would welcome me home.

But he didn't strike. And he didn't pick me up; he didn't even move to grab me. 

"You wanna die," he said, "I'll leave you here."

Should I have wanted to die? I wanted my team, I wanted to be with them. But they were as safe as they could ever be, and there were other Autobots, other survivors, people who weren't safe, who needed help. I could be no use to them if the Sharkticons found me. Capture, trial, execution – that's the Quintesson way. 

But if I went with Vortex, there was no guarantee I'd be in a position to help anyone. It would be the largest risk I had ever contemplated. 

In the end, he flicked his rotors again and shrugged. Then he turned on his heel and walked slowly down the corridor. And I followed.

* * *

The room was large and empty and it echoed.

First Aid didn't like it. He didn't like being locked in, although he knew it was for his own safety. He didn't like the lack of windows, the large pipes that ran the length of the wall. He didn't like the noises they made as the grounded ship's plumbing went about its ceaseless work.

He didn't like to be alone. 

All this was as obvious to Vortex as the medic's compulsion to repair himself, and his desperate, pathetic need to live. 

Vortex didn't touch him. He didn't threaten, he made an effort not to loom. He gave First Aid the personal space the Autobot appeared to need, although his frame told of other needs that Vortex was certain he wasn't prepared for, and that his mind would actively reject. Contact between two energy fields, a reassuring touch, a solid embrace. 

The Autobot wanted someone to hold him, someone to run his engine high so the vibrations channelled through his armour and made him feel safe again. Someone to make him feel loved.

Vortex elected to keep his distance. For now.

* * *

_Journal recording 002_

Vortex suggested I make this journal. He brought me a recorder, taken from goodness knows where. It's Cybertronian, golden age. The data is held on a crystal. It looks so fragile, but I dropped it once by accident, and it didn't even chip. 

It would be private, he said, just for me. Something to help the joors pass, an activity to focus on. It has no transmitter, I checked. He isn't listening. 

I have a lot to process, and while this is hardly the place to grieve, to heal, it can't hurt to try.

That first night, I couldn't recharge. 

I kept expecting Vortex to come back. Maybe he'd bring Brawl, maybe he'd be alone. I thought he'd want payment of one kind of another, or maybe he'd just want to be entertained. I knew what kinds of entertainments he enjoyed. 

But he didn't come back. 

I measured the room – it's the same room I'm standing in now. Thirty mechanometers by five, with an alcove at the opposite end to the door. The alcove holds a makeshift bunk, and a small set of shelves. It has a sliding shutter with a flimsy latch that can be fastened only from the inside; there might as well not be a lock at all.

The lock on the outer door is far larger. It's a maintenance hatch, and this isn't really a room; it's an empty space between rooms. Once, it was filled with machinery, back when this ship was sentient and could transform. 

I'm living in a corpse. 

The walls are grey under this layer of purple paint. Vortex promises he'll scavenge me some red and blue, says I can make it feel like home.

Home was never dead. 

Home was never alive in the first place. Home was just a building, with a helipad on the roof and my medbay down below, and a room where we could all sit and talk while Earth's Sun shone brightly through the windows. 

I doubt I'll see Earth again. The Quintessons hold it, although Vortex says that Galvatron plans to break with them. He says something big's about to happen and China has already sided with the Decepticons. Brazil too, and several others, nations I never visited, but would have loved to see. He says there will be an uprising. 

I don't know if I can trust him. 

That first night, I lay awake and listened to the noises of the ship. I counted the dents in the walls and imagined how each had been made. I calculated the joules contained in the full cube of energon Vortex had given me, and how long it would sustain me if he never returned. 

But Vortex came back in the morning. 

I still thought in terms of morning, afternoon, evening, back then. Earth terms. They don't apply in here, in this grounded ship that was once a guardian of Cybertron.

Now the ship is one small fragment of the suburbs of Kaon. Kaon has no morning, no afternoon, no evening. Only night. Cybertron has no Sun. 

Vortex brought a roll of foam for the berth. Brand new, Earth-made. It was stamped with an Autobot logo. Stolen, then, from our stores. 

He didn't stay long, he just lay it out on the stiff, scratched bunk, told me he was on duty in two breems, and went away again. 

It was another forty joors before I could sleep.

* * *

Intrigued, Vortex hunted down the surveillance footage.

Soundwave's network was immense, and grew with each new rotation of the planet. 

Vortex found Defensor's last stand, the death of First Aid's team. He followed the medic as he stumbled to Blades' cooling frame. Then watched him turn as someone must have called the retreat. The footage had no sound, but a tense indecision was written in First Aid's pose. Stay or go? Certain death or uncertain survival. The same choice he'd been faced with the day Vortex had found him. 

Vortex leaned back in his chair, and watched First Aid flee. The timestamp helped him locate footage from the next camera, and the next. At first, there were three survivors, then five. One injured, dying. They found a space to pause, and First Aid fought to save him. 

He failed. 

They picked up other strays, bent and broken. A Dinobot, a Wrecker, a handful of Paradronians. 

The more of them there were, the easier they were to find. The Sharkticons picked them off. Scourge - or a Sweep, it was never easy to tell when Vortex didn't have them in front of him - found the group resting. Half were in recharge, half unable to sleep, and one lone mech was on watch. 

Vortex sped up the footage, saw them die in double time. Then back to the medic, as a core group of three fled down a tunnel into the scrap-filled ragged edges of Dead End. 

Did they know they were heading towards Kaon? Vortex thought not. 

He accessed the second layer of cameras, his security clearance easily high enough for this. Soundwave would know, but Soundwave had bigger things to worry about than the Combaticon interrogator entertaining himself with footage of dying Autobots. 

First Aid lost them at the outskirts of Kaon proper, where the filth of the Undercity lapped against the walls of the ancient industrial powerhouse. It wasn't the Quintessons, and it wasn't the Unicronians, but the very fabric of the city that claimed his fellow survivors. The roads there were weak, the walls unstable. A maze of dangerous land, attractive to no-one but the opportunistic; which, Vortex mused, had been the reason Onslaught had claimed it for his own. 

The green racer fell through the road. One moment he was there – watching cautiously for anything moving, trusting the ground to be stable – the next he was gone. The dun tanker went after him, heroism looking just the same as reckless stupidity with the benefit of hindsight. 

The noise had brought drones, the drones had brought Sharkticons, and there was nothing First Aid could do but run. 

It had been luck that sent him into the Combaticons' new headquarters. Vortex grinned and stretched; he liked it when luck was on his side.

* * *

_Journal recording 003_

Hot Spot's optics cracked when he hit the floor. 

I don't know why that detail is the clearest to me. Their light had already faded; only a faint glow remained, a trace of heat in his cooling frame. It wasn't an indication of life, much as I'd wanted it to be. 

It was just a symptom of the first stage of decay.

* * *

Finding the site of the battle was easy. Finding the remains he was looking for, not so much.

Everything was twisted, broken, infested. A turbofox lapped at a pool of spoiled coolant; a coil of energy leeches seethed through the smashed remains of a grounder's fuel tank. 

Vortex checked each scrap against his schematics. He dragged an arm from under the rust-bitten torso of the Protectobot gestalt leader, and threw it in the collection pod. Hot Spot's face had melted, but his cracked red optics were still in place, staring sightlessly up at the junk in orbit. 

Smirking, Vortex brought his heel over the dead mech's face, and ground the optics to dust.

* * *

_Journal recording 004_

The corpse I inhabit has been dead a long while. It was grounded aeons before I was built. Before humans evolved, before the Ark left Cybertron. 

Before Vortex and his team were incarcerated. 

Sometimes, I think he wants to tell me about it. He'll make allusions to his time in the Detention Centre. He'll say things like "I know what it's like to be alone," and "It's not safe for you to leave, but it's gotta suck slag being by yourself."

And then he brings me things. A glitchmouse in a cage, a datapad with games, a monitor hooked up to the security feed from the cameras in the hallway. He brought me the key for the maintenance hatch, in case – he said – something should happen to him, or to the building.

Today, he brought me a radio. A simple multi-channel communicator set, made on Earth during the last flowering of Autobot-human cooperation. It's a replacement for the fried comms hardware on my arm. 

The radio has a black box attached, with a light that flashes on and off. Vortex controls the light. It tells me when Soundwave is performing a sweep of all Autobot channels. It tells me when it's safe to search for other survivors, and when it would be suicidal. 

I asked him why, and he gave me this look, as though I've misjudged him and he's hurting. 

But I'm not sure, he's so hard to read. It doesn't matter that he never has his mask closed when he comes to see me, he has a poker face Smokescreen would be proud of. 

"We need to gather everyone together," he told me. "We need to know who's still out there, where they are, if they need help. We need to coordinate if we're going to bring down the Quintessons."

I still don't know if I believe him, but I'm going to try the radio. What else can I do?

* * *

“What am I meant to do with this?” Vortex held the human by its leg and shook it in Brawl's face. “It's dead, look at it.”

“It wasn't,” Brawl said. He prodded the corpse, making it swing. “It was groaning before. Onslaught said Cyclonus said I gotta give it to you.”

Vortex glared. “Well it's dead now, and it stinks.” He thought about stuffing it down Brawl's cannon barrel, but he'd have to chop it up first. “I need one that's alive. Tell Ons-”

Brawl's optics narrowed beneath his visor, and his fists clenched. “I ain't your messenger boy,” he growled. “Comm him yourself.”

* * *

_Journal recording 005_

Sometimes, Defensor talks to me. His voice is an echo; he tells me things he accomplished, things I remember him doing. He tells me details I never would have noticed by myself. 

He repeats these things in varying patterns. The same notes, although the melody is always different. 

It isn't him, it's just my databanks trying to make sense of the ruins of the bond. I pretend each piece of knowledge is new, that each scrap of thought left in my circuits comes from a sentient force. 

But all I have is a ghost. One fifth of a ghost. 

Defensor is no company.

* * *

His Autobot was a creature of routine.

Vortex sprawled in his chair, grey armour flashing blue from the light of the screen. 

Image quality was poor, nothing like that of Soundwave's network. But the tiny camera in the room-between-rooms wasn't part of Soundwave's network. 

The Autobot paced, limbs fuzzy and face indistinct. He kept his mask on, always, and his hands were constantly moving. 

He made frequent adjustments to the radio, listening, and only stopped when Vortex activated the warning light. He saw to his own maintenance, taking his time presumably because he had the time, but not appearing to take any pleasure from it. Sometimes, he would wrap his arms around himself and sit on the edge of his bunk. He looked as though he was trying not to shiver. 

Every tenth joor, he set up a barricade around the gaps where the pipes met the wall, and let the glitchmouse have the run of the floor. He gave it obstacles to climb, a cap-ful of coolant, a drop of energon on his palm. 

The camera didn't reach the partition. Too bad, Vortex would have liked to have known whether First Aid recharged with the partition open or closed. He would have liked to have watched the mech sleep.

* * *

_Journal recording 006_

I dreamed Blades was holding me. Nothing more, just holding me. 

I miss being held. 

Sometimes I worry I'll forget what they looked like. I run a system check every fifty joors, searching for that first hint of data corruption. 

I never find it; my memory is perfect. It does nothing for the fear.

* * *

_Journal recording 007_

I almost touched him today. He brought me oil and a can of hydraulic fluid, good brands, the kind we would have used back home. 

He isn't happy with the walls. He said they've started to leak elsewhere on the ship, and there's a nasty acid seeping in. He wants me to move. 

"Where?" I asked him. 

"Up a few levels," he said. "In the tower, where I work. There's more space there, under the old warehouses, and you'd be safer." He showed me a map; it was like the blueprint of something living. 

"How long?" I asked, and when I went to touch the map I could feel the very edge of his energy field. I should have moved my hand, just a little, but I didn't want to. I stared at the map for far longer than I needed. 

“As soon as I get everything ready,” he told me, and still I didn't move. I can't be the only survivor; his can't be the only energy field I'll ever have the chance to make contact with. There were thousands of Autobots, a thousandfold more of Paradronians; in the months I've been locked in this refuge, the Sharkticons can't have murdered them all. But Vortex is the only sentient being I've seen in all that time. 

It's the difference between intellectual reasoning and concrete tactile fact; I know that they're alive, but I can't reach out and touch them. Sometimes the frame just wants to know that it's not alone. 

“Is there anything else I can get you?” he said, and I could have sworn he used folding away the holographic plastic of the map as cover for putting some distance between us. 

I shouldn't have used him like that, but he left before I could scrape together an apology.

* * *

Swindle found Vortex in the comms room. He had a homing instinct for a mech with needs; it was the only use to which he ever put their team bond.

“You fresh outta coolant?” Swindle asked. “Didn't know you could run so hot.”

Vortex kicked out from the workstation, forcing his chair to spin. “You finished my drone yet?” he demanded.

“ _Your_ drone?” Swindle countered. “Work like that takes time, resources. Skills.”

“Skills you don't have.” Vortex spun back to the console, and cranked up the air filtration. The breeze was soothing on his rotors, but didn't make a scraplet's bit of difference anywhere else. 

“Skills none of us have,” Swindle said, “And I need to pay for.” He approached the monitors, inserting himself into Vortex's field of vision. “It'll take a while, and in the meantime, I got first pick of the condemned, three for two offer from Scourge, no questions asked. Could cool you down...”

Vortex glared. Swindle smiled and tapped his foot. 

“How much?” Vortex said. 

Swindle shrugged. “Twelve cubes of regular, four of high grade, and two of the Sweeps wanna watch.”

“Sweeps can go leap in a smelter,” Vortex said. “Can you get them down to ten regular, two high?”

“They're already doing three for two,” Swindle said. “And I got them down from twenty and six. They've got that yellow grounder, the one with the fins.”

Vortex pushed his chair sideways, leaning into the breeze. “All right,” he said, “I'm in. But you're still gonna finish my drone.”

* * *

_Journal recording 008_

I'm moving tomorrow. Vortex had me pack my things; he brought a trolley, the manual kind with pneumatic tires and a handle. 

Everything I've packed is something he's given me. 

He says we have to choose the right time. None of his team mates know, and the drones would report me. He says we have to move everything at once, and if anyone sees me I should cower and shake like a prisoner condemned to die.

I don't like what that says about the situation outside.

* * *

_Journal recording 009_

My new room has a window. The glass is tinted, opaque, Vortex showed me a picture from one of the security feeds. 

I can see out for the first time in almost nine and a half orns. 

I'm in a tower, roughly one hundred mechanometers wide and several hundred tall. I'm nowhere near the top, perhaps a third of the way up. I'm looking out now, over Kaon. Smoke rises in the distance, a steady grey stream, and if I focus I can see a blur that looks like a chimney. 

Industry, then, not war. 

My new bunk is larger, more comfortable, and the partition has a proper lock. It's more like a separate room, with space to stand as well as lie down. 

The walls of the main room are purple still, the ceiling brushed steel. This tower belongs to the Combaticons, along with the dead ship docked to it, the wasteland at its feet. There are new noises here, and every one of them makes me think I'll be found. 

I don't want to be found. I want to sit here by the window with my radio on my knee and do my best to find someone, anyone, alive out there.

* * *

“Open up.” The Sweeps' expressions were sour on the security monitor. One held a cage, the other a datapad. “We haven't got all cycle.”

Vortex took his time. This intel compound was his, not Soundwave's. In the tower of Combaticon HQ, it occupied the space between the wreck of the old guardian, and the warehouses Blast Off had commandeered. His territory.

“Hurry up!”

He hit the over-ride on the locking mechanism, and the door swung open. 

“Take this.” One of the Sweeps thrust the cage into his hands. The other held out the data pad. “Sign here for the prisoner.”

“Prisoner?” Vortex lifted the cage; organic eyes stared back at him, tiny and round and terrified. At least this one was alive.

* * *

_Journal recording 010_

The human was bleeding when Vortex brought him in. Lieutenant H. Mathers, US Air Force. I didn't know him, but I recognised the name stitched on his jacket; Marissa Faireborne had been his commander. 

He wore a respirator, hooked up to the atmospheric purification unit on his belt. The pipes were torn, his breathing ragged. I dread to think what had already got into his lungs. 

Vortex handed him over, gently. Blood coated his hands, and Lieutenant Mathers ground his teeth together, fists clenched against my palm. I lay him down on the bunk.

“The Sweeps brought him in,” Vortex said. “I'll tell command he died.” He leant against the door, arms crossed, head down. I couldn't tell if he was looking at me or the window.

Lieutenant Mathers was lucid, weak, determined. He recognised me from TV back on Earth, and told me the extent of his injuries. The gash across his leg was simple enough to cauterise, although the smell of burning flesh isn't something I will ever get used to. Lieutenant Mathers bore it well, his breathing slow and deliberate, cries muffled as he bit on the leather of his own belt. 

“Didn't know you could weld squishies,” Vortex said, sounding amused. I'm not sure I care for his sense of humour, but I need to remember that he didn't have to bring Mathers to me.

There were other cuts – on Mathers' arm and chest, cutting through the mottled evidence of older scrapes and contusions. The cuts weren't deep, and they weren't fresh, but they hadn't been given the chance to heal. His brown skin turned pink around the wounds; it looked painful, and the inflammation was worse than I would have liked to see. 

“Do you have access to human medical supplies?” I asked Vortex. “I need sterile dressings, antibiotics... And maintenance supplies, food and drink.” I expected him to laugh, but he shrugged and went to look. 

“We gotta get out!” Mathers said as soon as he was gone. “Splint me up, I can take my own weight.”

“I wouldn't advise it,” I said, as I began to patch the slender tubes on Mathers' purification unit. “I don't have the right tools to make a scan, but I think you might have cracked a few ribs.”

Mathers shrugged, wincing. “Wouldn't be the first time,” he said. “Which way's out? We gotta go, before he gets back.”

“You're in no shape for that,” I said. “You're safe here-”

“Safe?” He looked as though I'd struck him. “With that Decepticon? You can't be serious.” He groaned and got me to help tug his clothes back on. “Sky Lynx went down,” he said. “Grimlock's dead.”

“Oh Sigma, I'm so sorry.” 

“I flew out on Swoop.” Mathers glared at the door. “We'd gone after Sevax, but Galvatron wasn't where he was meant to be and... _fuck_.”

I pressed my hands flat to the bunk to stop them shaking. “What happened to Swoop?” 

“I don't know. We got separated on the ground,” Mathers said. “I hid in the vents.” He laughed, and it turned into a cough. He tore off his respirator for a moment, and I watched for the tell-tale flecks of blood. There was only phlegm. “Cliché, ain't it?” he said.

“When was the last time you changed the filter?” I asked, gesturing to his respirator. 

“Does it matter?” he said. “It's been on amber since I got here.” He paused, taking the kind of shaky careful breath that spoke of someone trying not to cough. “All the supplies were on Sky Lynx. C'mon, we gotta get outta here. The con who brought me here, that's their interrogator. We can't stay.” 

“You're in no position to move.” I tried to be assertive without being dictatorial. “You need time to heal, you need food and drink and-”

“And he's just gonna go fetch that?” Mathers clutched his side, but gave no other sign of pain. “We're _prisoners_. We _need_ to get out of here.”

I wanted to object. I wasn't a prisoner, I had the key, the schematics to the building. My radio. But the moment the words hit my vocaliser they disintegrated. To Mathers, it would only look like a trap.

“What's happening out there?” I asked, and Mathers gave me a sharp look. His eyes narrowed, and the creases in his face deepened.

“I don't know,” he said. 

I nodded and didn't ask again. There's no reason for him to trust me; we can make plans later, right now his health is my foremost concern.

* * *

The drone was waiting in the hall. It's paint was scuffed, its seams ruined; welding ringed its chest, the killing shot still visible in the circuit of the scar. It would never transform, but it didn't need to.

Vortex traced the new metal, let the thrum of warmth, of life, vibrate through his fingers. The drone stood dormant; not waiting, Vortex thought, because it had no awareness of self, no knowledge of the passage of time or notion of the future. It merely stood, for lack of any command, its pale rotors vibrating ever so softly with an echo of the machinery of its existance. 

It was perfect.

* * *

_Journal recording 011_

Mathers is worse. I need to recharge, but I can't. My hands are shaking. I need surgical instruments, an isolation chamber, IV antibiotics, an EM pulse generator, blood. 

I have none of those things. 

Vortex scavenged what he could, but I dare say finding the things I need while keeping Mathers' continued life a secret wasn't easy. 

His breathing worsens by the joor. A breem ago, he spat up blood. There's something in his lungs, although I don't know what. I'm hoping for parasitic nanites, as that will be easiest to treat. If it's dust from the factories, toxins and shards of crystal and metal, that will be harder. The infection is a complication, but again one I could easily cope with, if only I had the supplies. 

I've requested that Vortex stay away for a while. Mathers is tense around him, keeps reaching for the holster where his pistol used to sit. It's only to be expected.

* * *

_Journal recording 012_

His breathing worries me. A rasp on the intake, a gurgle. There's fluid on his lungs, and I don't have the means to drain it. 

Vortex snuck back in to bring me half a cube of mid-grade, but didn't stay. 

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I wish he hadn't gone. Mathers is no longer lucid. I don't know how long he has left. 

Not long. 

I don't want to be alone when he dies.

* * *

_Journal recording 013_

The floor is shaking. Trypticon is on the move, I can see him through the window. It's hard to keep the berth still, but for Mathers' sake I try.

Has Galvatron turned against the Quintessons? Mathers said he wasn't where he was meant to be, when Sky Lynx fell and Grimlock died. 

I don't know what that means, and Mathers is no longer in any state to answer questions.

* * *

_Journal recording 014_

Mathers is dead. 

He stopped breathing at 21:05:23, and his neural activity ceased a short while later. 

I don't know his faith, or even if he had one. I don't know the words to say over his corpse, or whether he would have objected to cremation. 

Sadly, we have no other option. 

I wrapped him in the bloody tatters of his uniform. Better than any wax-stained cloth I had in the room. Then I snuck out into the maze of the tower. 

I shouldn't have. Anyone could have seen me. The Sweeps, the Sharkticons, Vortex's team mates. 

I didn't get far. Vortex found me in the hallway, saw the sad parcel I carried, and took me to the nearest waste disposal chute. 

“Best I can do,” he said. “I'm sorry he didn't make it.”

I must have looked as though I didn't believe him, because he shook his head and walked away. Just to the corner, where he leant against the wall and kept watch. He stood there long enough for me to do what needed to be done.

* * *

_Journal recording 015_

I don't know what to think. I can't keep my temperature down, I... I shouldn't record this, but I need to talk it through. Maybe just to speak it aloud, maybe to analyse it. I don't know. 

I asked him to stay. 

Not for long, just for a joor or two, just to talk. It was after we got back from... from Mathers' cremation. 

I put my hand on his arm and asked him to stay.

And scrap, I'm sure I heard his engine rev, and there was something in his field, an off note, frustration. 

It's given me all kinds of thoughts I certainly shouldn't have. And I know they're born of grief, and isolation, and him being the only living Cybertronian I've been close enough to touch in almost four months. But I can't clear my mind. 

He backed away from me. Said he couldn't, and I shouldn't do that, I wouldn't be safe with him. But I'm lonely and afraid and I just can't process this by myself. I tried again, asked him please to stay, just for a while. 

And scrap, but he could have. We've talked before, while he was fixing equipment or bringing me things. He hasn't hurt me, he hasn't kept me here against my will. 

It doesn't matter. He didn't stay, and I'm sitting here staring at the dull red stains on the pad of my bunk, all that's left of the human I failed to save.

* * *

The drone knelt between his legs. Vortex sighed and caressed the sides of its helm; he was all out of self control.

“Code Eight One Zero...” he said, and his voice caught as those blue optics flared. “Activate behavioural subroutine delta four.” This wasn't the only reason he'd paid Swindle to fix him up with this drone, but it was the most pressing at this particular moment. The touch of the medic's hand still burned in his energy field, and his spike ached something fierce. 

The drone shifted slightly, adjusting its center of gravity to free its arms. Then a touch between his legs, shy and hesitant. 

Too subtle; that really wasn't what he needed right now. 

“Activate delta eight,” Vortex snarled, and the touch became deft, confident, all the polish of the finest Kalissian interface bots. 

The drone teased out his spike, glossa warm and sparking slightly on the heating nodes. 

Vortex groaned, and clung to the square white helm. Blue lips surrounded him; hint of a smile and a gleam in the drone's blue optics as it slowly bobbed its head. 

This would take the edge off.

* * *

_Journal recording 016_

Mathers was wrong, I'm not a prisoner. 

I haven't left because I have a chance here, I can do some good. 

I just need to bide my time. 

I wish Vortex would come back.

* * *

_Journal recording 017_

I think I've offended him. 

He came while I was in recharge, and goodness knows how I managed to sleep. He left a cube of energon, and a new tub of wax complete with its plastic seal. 

He hasn't been back. 

I can see the factories from my window, the mechs emerging like ants from a nest. New-builds, every one of them. 

For the first time in four million years, Cybertronians are being mass-produced in Kaon. 

I don't know what this says about the war.

* * *

_Journal recording 018_

The wax smells good; it reminds me of home. 

The stain on the bunk reminds me of Mathers. I turned the foam pad over, but I'm still aware of it. 

I tried to fix my comms again, but I don't have the right components. The little human-made radio sings static, with the occasional whine. It sounds like someone's trying to access the signal, but it could just be atmospheric interference. 

When Vortex came back, he found me pressed against the window, watching the trail of mechs moving between the factory exits and the large non-sentient transports. 

“I've got some news,” he said. I think he likes to be with people, because he came over straight away and only seemed to remind himself that he needed to keep some distance when he was already within arm's reach. 

I kept my optics on the distant roads, trying to fight that ridiculous anticipatory tingle. The frame is so selfish. “What's happened?”

“Back on Earth,” Vortex said, “one of your squishy nations tried to nuke the Quintessons. China or Russia, one of the big ones.”

“Oh no.” My legs turned to rubber and I gripped the sill of the window just to stay upright. 

“It's chaos.” Vortex shrugged. “The Quints are hitting back. Those soldiers out there.” He nodded to the window. “They're headed for Earth. Galvatron gave Ghyrik a face full of particle cannon. Blew the fragger to the pit.”

I turned from the window and leant against the wall. The death of our enemies – even the deaths of high ranking Quintessons – has never been a source of joy for me. “But Earth,” I said. “They can't...”

“They have,” Vortex said. “And you gotta be careful, standing at the window all cycle long. Sure the glass is tinted, but it ain't mirrored. Someone gets close enough to the outside and you're peering out, they'll see you.” 

“But... You're allied with the humans now...” 

He went to touch my shoulder, then evidently thought better of it. “ _Some_ humans, sure,” he said, “but that's a long way from being allied with the Autobots. Galvatron isn't about to allow that. Keep back a bit from the window, yeah? I don't want you getting hurt.”

* * *

_Journal recording 019_

The intel compound is in lockdown for fourteen hours of every day starting at 0400 joors. That includes my room. 

I still have my key, but I don't have the over-rides. It gives me a queasy feeling, even though I know it's the most sensible course of action. We can't risk anyone finding me.

* * *

_Journal recording 020_

Vortex got into a fight. I don't know who it was with or what started it, but I suspect it was in-faction or he would have gone to a Decepticon medic. I've patched him up as best I can, and he's lying on my bunk in light recharge. 

I shouldn't feel sympathy for him. I haven't forgotten who he is, what he's capable of. 

His rotors need replacing.

* * *

_Journal recording 021_

Oh scrap oh scrap oh _scrap_ , what have I done? 

He couldn't leave, it was lockdown by the time he woke up and he'd forgotten the over-rides. So we talked... and we talked some more and it was OK. Kind of. At first. 

I asked him to hold me.

Of all the questionable ideas, all the stupidity! But he did, and oh scrap it was nice. Not because it was him, it could have been anyone I suppose. But he's been kind to me, and he was warm and solid, and it was like the incident with the map only worse. I shouldn't have used him like that. 

Especially as he seemed to enjoy holding me. 

I mean _really_ enjoy it. As much as I did. And that's something else I should object to, but I can't. My team is dead, my faction scattered. Earth could be destroyed, and even if that doesn't happen, I can never go home. I'm alone, except for him. 

I put my head on his shoulder. He needed no encouragement to hold me tight, to keep his hands still on my back, to gently rev his engine. The kiss of our energy fields tingled the full length of my frame. 

“I shouldn't be doing this,” he said quietly.

“True,” I agreed, and couldn't help but add, “Just a while longer? Please...”

* * *

“Hey, Vortex!” Swindle's cheerful voice sounded from the corridor; it was the tone he used when he wanted something he knew his target wasn't prepared to give. “I need the drone.”

“Get... _slagged_ ,” Vortex snarled. The drone was busy. Its hips rocked between his thighs, the charge too high now to stop just because Swindle was about to walk in on him. What a day for the medic to decide he needed a hug.

Swindle's dark helm appeared in the doorway, an astrosecond before he ducked out again. “Sigma, Tex, aren't you on duty?” 

“And?” Vortex said, and leaned back on his desk to get some air to his pectoral vent. “What do you want the drone for?”

“Got some crates need shifti...” Swindle trailed off. “Y'know what, I'm gonna come back later, when you're not getting fragged by a dead mech.”

* * *

_Journal recording 022_

I don't know where this will end.

We have become familiar. When we talk now, we sit close, our armour in contact, our energy fields meshed. He likes reminiscing. He tells me about Iacon and Praxus, Kalis and Vos. He tells me what Kaon used to be like, how the furnace-heat and the smoke and the frantic buzz in the streets below is a shadow of the activity it saw in the Golden Age. 

The skies are empty, he says. I see the vapour trails of shuttles and seekers, and he sees vacant space. 

When I'm alone, I bring up the files I have on him. I remind myself that he's a liar, a manipulator, cruel and cold and impulsive. A true psychopath, he pursues his own pleasure above all things, without empathy or remorse.

I remind myself to be careful. I try not to get attached. 

It isn't working.

* * *

_Journal recording 023_

I dreamed of Blades again. This time, he was infected with cosmic rust. I was too. 

When I tried to touch him, we both crumbled.

* * *

The Autobot paced.

That was nothing new. Vortex zoomed in on him, focused on his hands. He kept his mask on, as always, but his fingers broadcast the emotions his visored face lacked.

He cleaned his hands. Not once, but over and over, eating through the wax. Clear symptom of anxiety. But the radio wasn't on, and he even ignored the window. The glitchmouse hunched in its cage, gnawing on a bunch of stripped wires. 

The seventh time First Aid reached for the polish, Vortex turned his monitor off and headed for the hidden room. 

“Brought you some energon,” he said, as the door slid open. First Aid froze, cloth in hand, as though he'd been caught doing something embarrassing. Vortex rolled his mask back and smiled. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” the Autobot replied. “No. Maybe. Come in, please.” His fingers twitched, the cloth wound tight around them. “Your paint is scratched. What happened?”

Vortex shrugged. “Sharkticons,” he lied, thinking of the drone's pitted armour, its extra functionality. But it was a trinket, a tool; it was nothing compared with its living team mate. 

“Do you need, um, anything?” 

“No.” Vortex locked the door behind him, and put the cube down on a table. “Mid grade this time,” he said. “I've secured the floor above, maybe you'd like to go for a drive some time?”

It was a little hint of freedom, to off-set the lockdown, but the Autobot shook his head. “No, I, um, perhaps.” He vented long and deep, and when he spoke again his voice was steady, his hands still. “I would like to interface.”

“Huh?” Better to feign ignorance than to sweep him straight off to his bunk. If handled poorly, this had the potential for disaster. 

“I'll understand if that's not what you want,” First Aid said. “But I... got the impression that perhaps you might quite, um, like to?”

It was hardly seductive, but the request had its own innocent charm. 

“Are you sure?” Vortex said. “I know about isolation. It changes a mech.” He forced a shudder through his rotors. “I wouldn't want you to do something you'll regret.”

“I won't regret it,” First Aid said, and there was a quality to his poise and the steady blue light of his gaze that Vortex found genuinely intriguing. It was the same determined, desperate strength that had attracted him the first time they'd met in battle, and again in the hallway of Combaticon HQ with the Sharkticons approaching and death on every side. 

“I've thought this through,” First Aid continued. “And I'm sure. Would you like to interface with me?”

“Forthright, aren't you?” Vortex smiled.

“I don't want ambiguity,” First Aid replied. “I'm lonely and I'm restless, and I would like to connect. There it is.” He spread his hands, apparently having run out of words. 

“Just connect?” It was simple enough to close the distance between them, but harder to reign in his energy field, to get the coolant flooding to the right places. Scrap, he was heating. 

“Not _just_ connect,” First Aid admitted. “But at first...”

“Maybe I could hold you?” Vortex suggested. And yes, that was the way. Gentle and slow, let the Autobot lead. “At least at first.”

* * *

_Journal recording 024_

I think this counts as self medication. 

It never should have happened, but...

No regrets. Like Vortex said, I shouldn't do anything I'm going to regret, so I can't regret this. It's just a hardline connection, only energy transfer. 

The loneliness still bites, but its teeth aren't as sharp any more.

* * *

Another duty cycle, another joor spent connected, wrapped in the gentle warmth of the Autobot's embrace.

“I could get a taste for this,” Vortex said, and made it obvious through the connection that he was teasing, that he already had a taste for it. He had a taste for other things too, but he let First Aid guide the pace. Holding back was hard, but interfacing wasn't an end in itself, merely a means, and he _needed_ this to work. 

The Autobot sighed against him. There was something wild in his energy field, a frustrated urgent flickering that penetrated Vortex's seams and wormed its way under his armour. The medic squirmed, his face for once bare, and a strange half-smile appeared on his well-crafted lips. 

“What are you thinking?” Vortex asked, but instead of an answer First Aid flooded the cable with current, searing and hot and _scrap_ that went to all the right places. 

Vortex groaned and stretched, then curled around his captive. _Do it again_ , he wanted to say, to pin the Autobot down and demand it, but instead he parcelled up the sentiment, the heat of his spike pressing tight against it cover, the tense grinding need that made him feel as though his wires were about to melt, and shot it back through the interface. 

First Aid gasped and squirmed anew. He wriggled down between Vortex and the bunk, encouraging the rotary to lean up, to make space. The dull press of their armour was nothing, but the heat of their frames against hidden sensors, the sparks which flew from plate to plate, the mingled thrill of their energy fields, _that_ was stunning. 

Hydraulics sighed, armour shifted. First Aid seized him by the waist, and encouraged him slowly to shift, allowing the medic to part his legs. 

“Would you...?” he began, but he must have lost his nerve because he stopped and that self-effacing half smile returned. He tried again, “Would you like to?”

Vortex didn't try to parse an answer. Instead he knelt between First Aid's legs, and exercised the privileges he had earnt over the past fourteen orns. 

He touched without fear that it would break the Autobot's fragile trust. He ran his hands over armour heated and buzzing, over seams that spat sparks and lit tiny tongues of flame on his palms. He stroked circles on the Autobot's hips and thighs, watching his smile, his optics, listening for the switch in his fans that signified another threshold crossed. 

He dipped a fingertip past the edge of the medic's armour, where the tough outer plating had long-since slid aside, and stroked a teasing path around the slick hot rim of his valve. 

“Now?” First Aid said. “Please!”

Vortex could have stood to hear that again, but the Autobot bucked and groaned, and tried to tug Vortex closer. He let himself be pulled, aligned his spike, and pushed gently inside. Metal spun and parts shifted, and the valve adjusted to draw him in, to squeeze him. 

Slowly, carefully, he began to move, rolling his hips, drawing the ridges of his spike over that ever-shifting internal geography. First Aid clung to him, optics dim and lips parted. Thinking of Blades, perhaps, or Streetwise. Evoking the memory, bitter-sweet and tinged with grief, a shield against enjoying himself too much. 

Or so Vortex interpreted the odd snatches of insight. It didn't matter, the mech was his. 

Vortex's overload hit first. Hot and heady, the energy tumbled through him to burst out over the connection. First Aid resisted, valve clenched and fingers tight on the flanges of Vortex's helm. Then he arched and squeezed with his thighs around Vortex's hips, mouth forming the softest of sounds. Vortex shuddered happily, riding out the aftershocks, loving the feedback loop of the interface, the spectacle of his captive spread under him. 

He took a long moment to enjoy it and burn the image into his visual cortex, then Vortex shifted his weight from the medic, his spike sliding free, and lay down again beside him. That contrary edge of grief was still present, but First Aid leaned against him, and rested his head on Vortex's arm. His intentions were clear, and Vortex wasn't about to ruin things now. 

He wrapped his arms around the Autobot, the interface still humming between them, fully prepared to hold him for as long as it took.

* * *

_Journal recording 025_

I saw Blades. 

In the hallway by the main door. 

I'd gone out... I wanted to walk, to... I don't know. There was an explosion in the city, a factory. Mechs died, and I couldn't get to them, I couldn't do anything but watch. 

So I went walking. I used my key; lockdown isn't for another forty minutes. I went walking and I... I saw Blades. 

Not just someone who looks like him. Not another rotary in the wrong light. I saw _Blades_.

Blades is dead. He's dead, but he's here, outside. His armour's all beaten and scratched, his rotors are crooked. He's standing over by the outer door. Not doing anything, just standing, dormant. 

I have to get out of here.

* * *

_Journal recording 026_

Oh scrap, oh scrap I'm overheating. My fans haven't come on, my vents are blowing steam. I know what it is; physiological response to the shock of seeing Blades' body used in that way. Knowing doesn't help. 

_Blades..._

Vortex has gone to fetch me more coolant. 

I'm shivering. I don't want to shiver, it only makes me warmer. 

He explained everything. How Swindle had salvaged the parts, had made him a drone out of Blades' dead frame. How he had to accept it, keep it. He couldn't risk raising suspicions; he had me to think of. 

I wish I hadn't found out that way. I should never have left my room without him.

* * *

The mind was an amazing thing.

So much death, so little freedom, and yet as soon as his frame was again an acceptable temperature, First Aid managed to rationalise the existence of the Blades drone, and its presence in the intel compound. 

He swallowed Vortex's lies without even the faintest trace of grease to help them go down. Stark 'truths' it seemed were perfectly palatable, possibly because they were less straightforwardly appealing. 

Vortex stretched out on the medic's comfortable bunk, and stroked the seams that ran the length of his back. The Autobot still trembled, but it was an attractive trembling, and Vortex could wait.

* * *

_Journal recording 027_

Yesterday, I went for a drive. I transform every day, just to keep everything from seizing, but I hadn't driven for almost four months. 

Vortex took me upstairs to the first level of the old warehouses. A buffer zone, he said, between Blast Off's territory and his own. I worked off some of my frustration, my anger. 

Worked off, or replaced it with another kind of frustration, brought on by the proximity of my unlikely friend. Exacerbated, no doubt, by the lingering unease at having seen Blades' corpse made into a drone. 

Vortex reassures me that he has made certain none of my other brothers can be used in that way. 

I don't want to know what he did.

I drove myself ragged, but even that wasn't enough. We returned to the floor below, and got as far as the little control room before this odd anxious surplus of energy got the better of me. I didn't need to ask, just let my hand brush against the edge of a rotor-blade. 

He wasted no time. The compound was meant to be in lockdown, we were meant to be alone. He lifted me onto the sloping bank of a computer, and I opened for him. I wanted to be filled, to be warmed and touched, and he entered me and for a long while I clung to him and made the most of my frustration. 

But we weren't alone. Swindle stood in the doorway, mouth open and optics so very bright. 

It's a good thing we were connected. 

Vortex saw what I saw, was as surprised as me. Swindle shouldn't have had the over-rides, and he certainly shouldn't have made his own way in. Vortex snapped at him, told him to leave, while the connection buzzed with new information. _Don't look at him, don't act surprised, don't stop._

_Pretend you're a drone. He won't think twice._

I almost purged. But Swindle was still standing there, amused now, making sarcastic, snippy small talk. There was nothing I could do but cling to Vortex, trying not to think about the presence of his spike, the little thrilling pulses of energy that still travelled the connection whether I wanted them any more or not. 

_You're doing great. Look at me._ Instructions over the interface, quiet and calm and why wouldn't Swindle leave? _That's it, look straight at me. He's buying it, you're going to be fine._

* * *

Vortex could have put his fist through Swindle's snide little grounder face.

He stared too long and too hard. Pricing up the medic, making too thorough an inspection of Vortex's property. 

Thank Sigma he didn't get any closer than the door. 

The ex-Protectobot slumped as soon as Swindle left. But he still clung, hands on Vortex's shoulders, valve tight around his spike. He was in shock, subdued, but he made no active objection to his continued spiking. 

Smiling, Vortex held him tight and draw out the charge towards overload.

* * *

“It's for your own good,” Vortex said. “In case you're spotted.” He cocked a crooked smile, and stroked the Autobot beneath the chin, in just the right place to relax him. “It's only paint, you can scrape it off later if you like.”

First Aid looked up, his gaze as steady as ever, his processors clocking away. “Not a brand?” he said. “Only paint?”

“Only paint,” Vortex echoed, and trailed a finger down the smooth white plane of First Aid's shoulder; the prefect place for an owners' mark.

First Aid studied the paint – Decepticon purple – and gave a brief nod. “All right.”

* * *

_Journal recording 028_

The lockdown has been tightened. Three joors a day of freedom.

I can leave my room, regardless of whether Vortex is around or not. Swindle hacked his locks again, but it doesn't matter if Swindle sees us. He believes that I'm a drone. Like Blades. He doesn't look twice at me. 

Have I become that lifeless? 

I make myself walk the corridors, although I don't want to. I can't become a recluse. Swindle doesn't attempt to command me, and for that I am immeasurably grateful. 

Last night, I turned on the radio. It was the first time in almost an orn. The reception is poor, but for once there's more than just static. I try not to get my hopes up, but it sounds like coded orders, Autobot voices. Humans too. 

I try to reply, but even plugged into the cable from my wrist each attempt ends in a crash of white noise. I think the set is faulty, but I can't strip it to mend the problem while it's still possible for me to listen to their voices.

* * *

_Journal recording 029_

Rodimus is alive! 

I press myself to the window; Vortex's warning doesn't matter today. I need to see them. Arcee and Springer, and a human piloting a non-sentient plane. Marissa? I don't know, but Swoop is alive, and Snarl, and an army of mechs whose names I've never known. 

Smoke billows over the factories; explosions hit closer to home. That one human plane was only the beginning. I see Powerglide and Skydive and Silverbolt, and a flock of man-made jets all painted with the red of the Autobot brand. 

It makes me aware of the less desirable symbol that currently sits over my true paint. I'll have to find some solvent and take it off before I go out there.

* * *

“We talked about this,” Vortex said, a note of warning in his voice.

First Aid shook his head. “They're alive,” he said, his visor bright and his unmasked expression so earnest. “I need my tools.” He bounced back into the room, headed for his storage locker. 

Vortex pursued, sticking close to mark his presence in the medic's energy field. “What do you think you're doing?” 

“I can help,” First aid said, as though it was obvious. He looked up, hands full; he was buzzing, all that nervous anticipation, that frantic need to act. “I have to go.”

“You'll die,” Vortex said.

“I have to help them,” First Aid said. He lay his hand for a moment on Vortex's forearm, his energy field pulsing low, uneven. “You know I need to do this.”

Vortex tore himself away, and the tiny subtle wrench as their energy fields disentangled was beautiful. 

He strode to the window. “Look at them,” he said. “Just for a breem.” Outside was a chaos of laser-fire and smoke, the boom of explosions muffled by the thickness of the walls. It was perfect timing; Blast Off and Onslaught in space, Brawl seconded to the Terrorcons. Galvatron couldn't call for Bruticus, although it was only a matter of breems before the Unicronians scrambled all available fighters. 

Slowly, First Aid made his way back to the window. He was distracted, clipping tools to himself, filling his compartments. 

“They're losing,” Vortex said. It wasn't clear, not yet, but time would see it true.

“They need me,” First Aid countered. He fiddled with a box, securing it to his hip. “This is what I've been waiting for. It's my chance. Don't think I'm not grateful for all your help... this is something I have to do.”

“They're losing,” Vortex repeated. “I don't want you on the losing side.” He moved behind his captive, arms around the medic's shoulders, chest pressed to his back. “I can't protect you out there. If you leave, you really will die. Do you want to die?”

The medic sighed. “It's not as simple as that.” 

“Sure it is,” Vortex said. “Look out there. That's not an army, it's an embarrassment. I've seen riots do more damage to Kaon. They're all going to die, and you're not going to be with them when they do.”

Vortex thought First Aid would struggle, that he'd shake off the embrace and run for the door. 

He didn't. 

He slumped, and when he spoke his voice was barely more than a whisper. “I need to help them.” 

“You can,” Vortex lied, resting his chin on the the Autobot's helm. “Anyone they give me, I'll bring to you. Like that human.” He turned First Aid around, pleased by his lack of resistance. “You can help them from here.” His comm flashed; just the right moment. “I gotta go.”

* * *

_Journal recording 030_

My room's in lockdown. Vortex activated it before he left.

I'm a bag of live wires. I can't settle. I watch the battle, I check my supplies, I try to keep track of who's injured and who's safe. I can't see through the smoke. When someone goes down, I have no idea if they're dead or if they've escaped into the maze of tunnels and old buildings beneath the surface. 

He says it's for my own good, but I know he's being selfish. I wish that he was better than that.

* * *

_Journal recording 031_

Oh no. I don't want to look, but I can't turn away. They have Rodimus. Cyclonus and Scourge. They're on a high building, out of reach of the pall. They're holding him, and he's struggling, but he's weak. Cyclonus is cutting his cables, so cruel.

* * *

_Journal recording 032_

Vortex is out there, sticking to the smoke. I keep catching glimpses of his alt mode. I know he doesn't want me to see him.

* * *

_Journal recording 033_

Galvatron has the Matrix. 

It will poison him. But he isn't foolish enough to mount it in his chest. I wish he was.

* * *

_Journal recording 034_

Arcee is dead. It was Abominus. 

Springer has vanished. Swoop is making strafing runs, but he's low on fuel. Everyone is. 

My room is still in lockdown. I'm going to try to remove the door.

* * *

_Journal recording 035_

They killed Rodimus. 

Springer is lost, I saw Hun-Grrr flying in root mode, carrying his head. 

Silverbolt has assumed command, I heard him on the radio. I keep waiting for him to call the retreat. Please let him call the retreat.

* * *

_Journal recording 036_

My tools are inadequate. I can't even remove the control panel. The door is as tightly shut as it was when Vortex left and locked me in. 

Silverbolt has ben captured. Astrotrain burnt off his wings. His back bleeds energon and oil, and still he struggles. I wish he'd called the retreat. 

The humans are gone, dead or dying or fled back to wherever they came from. Was Vortex lying about the truce, about Russia bombing the Quintessons, about the rebellion? They were so few, though, Rodimus' fighters. They weren't the armies of Earth, just Autobot sympathisers. I have to believe that. 

There's still fighting on the ground, but the tenor has changed. It doesn't feel like a battle any more. 

Vortex was right; they're all going to die.

* * *

He found his captive pressed to the window, shivering and venting hard. Weight of grief and frustration, Vortex thought; it can't have been easy to watch, not with his programming.

“You should recharge,” he said, drawing up alongside the Autobot. “You look exhausted.”

The medic shook his head. 

Outside, the hunt went on. It wasn't serious any more. Swindle was giving odds on the survivors, and the Stunticons had set up a race for the few remaining enemy grounders. They'd be executed, eventually, but with any luck Vortex would be given them for a while between one stage and the next. 

“Come away from the window,” Vortex said, and it was pleasing how little resistance he met. The medic was tense, unhappy, but pliant. Vortex took the mech's head in his hands, forced him to look up. “I don't want to say I told you so.” He smiled, and let his energy field prickle over the medic's hidden sensors, inviting the frustration to mutate, grief to need, unhappiness to desperation. “Aren't you glad I kept you safe?”

First Aid shivered, but did not reply.

Vortex pulled him close, and the medic cleaved to him. Attached, dependent; perfect.


End file.
